Last Sunday was finally warm after days and days of wet, grey, gloomy weather. Coming back in from breakfast and grocery shopping, we found Fred out sunning himself. (Or herself – we’ve never checked that closely and wouldn’t know what to check for if we did and would just get bitten for our effort, so screw it.)

Normally at the first sight of us Fred will skitter off at Warp Eight. But not on Sunday. He just sat there. We actually had to be careful stepping over him, expecting him to make a break for the bushes at any second.

Nada. Ten minutes later, when I came back out with the camera, he was still there in the same spot.

I was quite surprised at how close I was able to get with the camera, down to about six inches. At first I thought he might be dead, but then I could see his eyes were open and darting back and forth.

He might have been waiting to soak up those last few photons that he needed to reboot his cold-blooded little carcass, because all of a sudden he spun about 10° to face me, opened his mouth in astonishment (okay, he might have been hissing at me), and took off at Warp Sixty-Four.

I had thought that he might be in danger out there of the local hawks and other birds, but then I realized what his game was. He’s Fred the Wonder Lizard! He was luring the hawks down by playing dead, at which point he was going to kick their ass and take them as prey back to his lair!